Volume 27, Number 10 · June 12, 1980
A Modern Master
By Kenneth Clark
Balthus
by Jean Leymarie
Rizzoli International (Skira), 150, 66 illus pp., $100.00
For over thirty years, from, say, 1912 to 1945, people who wanted to be 'in the movement' used to maintain that the subject of a picture was unimportant, and, if presented too insistently, positively harmful. Aesthetic satisfaction was achieved by shapes and color alone. This extraordinary proposition, which was unprecedented in the history of art, was to some extent a reaction against the conventional naturalism of the nineteenth century, and it may even be seen as part of that widespread rejection of traditional form which was thought to have influenced the music of Stravinsky and the prose of Joyce. The situation was both unhistorical and contrary to experience, but it was borne out by the work of a majority of painters for whom a subject was no more than a pretext for a piece of picture making. There was, however, one considerable artist who never disguised the importance that he attached to his subjects, a Pole named Count Balthazar Klossowski de Rola, who painted under the name of Balthus.
Review, 1264 words
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